“Not more so than in other places,” and something had made her add: “They gossiped about us in the hospital, you know.”
“Did they? I didn’t know that!” And he had looked amused—only amused.
Her first sight of Mrs. Garlett—how well she remembered it! “Poor Emily” had not been very gracious, though in time she had thawed. The sick woman realized the difference cool, competent Agatha Cheale made to the Thatched House, and to herself Mrs. Garlett grudgingly admitted that Miss Cheale’s sense and discretion matched her more useful qualities.
To those ladies who were kind enough to call on her—and practically every lady in the neighbourhood considered it her duty to make acquaintance with Harry Garlett’s cousin—Agatha explained that she never went out in the evening. So the delicate question as to whether she was or was not to be asked out to dinner with her employer was solved once for all, in the way every hostess had hoped it would be.
As Dr. Maclean walked quickly down the short avenue which led from the Thatched House to the carriage gate his mind was full of the woman he had just left.
He did not like Agatha Cheale, yet he did feel intensely sorry for her. For one thing she must be so lonely at times, for, with one exception, she had made no friends in either Terriford or Grendon.
The one person of whom she saw a good deal was clever, malicious Miss Prince. People had wondered more than once at the link between Miss Prince and Agatha Cheale, but there was nothing mysterious about it. Though Miss Prince was acquainted with every man, woman, and child in Terriford she led a somewhat solitary life in the Thatched Cottage, a pleasant little house which formed a kind of enclave in the Thatched House property. Thus propinquity had something to do with the friendship between the younger and the older woman.
There was one great difference, however, between them. Miss Prince was what some people call “churchy,” while Agatha Cheale never went to church at all, and on one occasion she had spoken to Dr. Maclean with a slightly contemptuous amusement of those who did.
The doctor was close to the wrought-iron gate giving into the road which led to his own house when, suddenly, he espied this very lady, Miss Prince, coming toward him. She held a basket in her hand, and he did not need to be told that it contained some dainty intended for Mrs. Garlett. Like so many sharp-tongued mortals, Miss Prince often did kind things, yet her opening remark was characteristic of her censorious attitude to her fellow creatures.
“It’s a good thing that Harry Garlett’s rather more at his factory just now. If it weren’t for poor old Dodson, that Etna China business would have gone to pieces long ago! I never saw a man gad about as he does——”